The Reflection of Jesus, the Glory of God, in You

Trials purify, purge, and refine us, so people can see more of Jesus’ character in us.

Compensation is not what we customarily fit to the salvation of God, but it is compensation that God fits to us in the production of our suffering; the Lord is giving us something back for the trials that life brings to our doorstep.

This compensation is the reflection of Jesus – the shining glory of God – in and about our character – as we are refined.

What does this shining glory of God – the reflection of Jesus – look like? It is every other glory apart from the world; or it is a glory totally unknown and unknowable to the world.

What the world cannot conceptualise or understand is the prevalence of God’s glory in and through us; a thing discerned only by the believer or the person close to belief. It is a thing spiritually discerned.

***

There is a divine connection between trial and glory; the refining trials of life and the glory of God. One is the antecedent and the other is the compensation for having gone to ground and for having journeyed humbly with God, despite the injustice.

We cannot be blessed of God unless we have first been found unjustly treated by the world. And, being that everyone is unjustly treated by the world, everyone qualifies for the blessing of God. But, there is one further, distinguishing qualifier, a little one, but nonetheless critically important; to respond with humility to let God be God – to surrender our reaction and agree to be refined, which is faith.

Glorious is the faith of the ancients, in and about you, when you allow God to grace you with the compensation of the ancients.

These issues of faith are surmounting the very apex the world can throw at us. Respond the right way and there is the finish of glory all over you! Think on it – nothing can defeat you even though it seems this very trial is tormenting you. The trial does not have the final say; and the only ‘final say’ that matters is that of the Lord your God.

***

Enormous engagements with stress, in the process of journeying humbly with God, enrol us to the gorgeous reality of the compensation of growth for the trials we have endured.

Trials purify, purge, and refine us, so people can see more of Jesus’ character in us.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The Sorrowful Power In Christ’s Passion

We may be sullenly sombre

And we may uncontrollably cry

But there is only about Christ’s Passion

The will within to die.

Eternal reluctance is what it is

As we experience this frightening scourge

To be beaten half to death

Because to death we will certainly merge.

THERE is nothing romantic about the cross. Nothing. It breaks the heart of the one who connects with Christ’s Passion every reason that the Passion is the worst injustice ever conceived.

Heart-felt thought of the Passion breaks us open to experience pain, and a pain so indescribable it transcends the physical. Indeed, physical pain in the comparative midst of sorrow in the soul is but an insult. Physical pain turns itself into something palpable at the level of the soul.

It is amazing that humankind is so forgiven for its ambivalence. The fact we can procure a theology for the Passion, and analyse it logically, is quite reprehensible. We must feel it, yet we are rewarded in this world for dumbing-it-down to the level of cognitive enquiry, to earn a degree, to preach and teach about it, etc.

We crucify Christ afresh every time we approach the Passion irreverently, yet how are we to possibly approach it any other way? The Passion, in its essence, is bound to floor us. Yet there is a sorrowful power that compels us from death to life, all because we were prepared to travel all the way to death for Christ.

***

The sorrowful power in Christ’s Passion is impossible to describe. It seems maddening to try and attempt it. But it is the human will to want to unravel the mystery. So I will try.

There is power in the Passion narrative even today.

If we will seek to connect with the message of the Gospel we will be prepared to throw everything we ever knew out the window, and, as such, find God in the mode of surrender.

To throw it all away is to gain power.

That’s the power of the Passion, and the very energy we speak of is to be approached never possibly more respectfully, and the source of such energy is its inherent sorrow – to give itself entirely away.

This sorrowful power is a persuasive power for the uplifting of all because the power of one is rescinded.

The Passion pulsates in the psyche of the person who has eternal life. They get it. Others who do not get it will possibly never comprehend it.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The Purpose of Life is... Compassion

Compassion is the medium that transcends poverty; it leads to true wealth.

TRUE WEALTH has nothing to do with what we associate as true wealth. The secularist has it all wrong; what is right in front of him or her is a grand delusion. They compromise every day without ever suspecting it. And the Christian, so often, follows the world and not their Christ.

Christ is compassion.

When we work toward real wealth – because we know it to be the courage and faith and hope-vested in compassion – we inevitably realise it is the down payment of the confidence of God, which is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Compassion is the key to your life. It is the key to life.

When we understand the role that compassion plays – to give ourselves away even as if we didn’t care about ourselves – even though we care about ourselves never more to give God a go – we stand to receive the keys to the universe.

In giving we receive.

In loving we are loved back – not by any nobody before us, but via the Lord of all Creation.

In sowing we reap, but we should never sow because we will reap, but we sow because we know how important it is to sow; we know it’s right to do, and God’s confirmation is merely the most powerful anointing that facilitates us doing it again and again and again.

The purpose of life is compassion.

When we love as if we were the Spirit of God our very selves, we get a foretaste of eternal life. God comes into us and makes his Presence known in the gifting.

Compassion is the medium that transcends poverty; it leads to true wealth.

Let’s not forget that this is a reversal world; everything is being reversed. Sense of the common variety is commonly nonsensical, and the only common sense that makes any sense is a Word from God.

This world and all its lack of compassion is passing away. Nobody needs to be told how to ply their compassion – God will lead each one to do what they have been predestined from the beginning to do. All we need do is ask.

If we arrive on God’s doorstep with a desire to sow compassionately, the Lord will give us his work to do. This is the purpose of life; yours, mine, everyone’s.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

Your Suffering and God’s Compensation

“It’s in the quiet crucible of your personal, private sufferings... that your noblest dreams are born... and God’s greatest gifts are given... in compensation for what you’ve been through... it is well.”

— Wintley Phipps

The grandest of solemn truths is cast before us above—by the heart of a person who has touched their tragedy, breathed of its noxious fumes, and lived to survive to tell the tale.

Suffering is a qualification like none other.

It takes us intact and crumbles our world in front of our eyes. It forces us through a process of extraction, where essences of us are swallowed whole by it. What remains is the material God can use.

Suffering predisposes us to blessing if we can humbly bear it.

These are the tests of us: can we sustain our humble obedience? Will we do the sharp and sticky deep middle-ground work that will connect us to God in the midst of torment and pain?

When groans replace words and grimaces mould our smiles into sickened vestiges of yesteryear, and we become, for the time, nothing, we are ready for the test. If we will obey God, trusting the Presence of the Healer, the Lord of Glory will fill us with his Spiritual inspiration—that long-awaited dream!

Returning From Suffering’s Source

Having knelt at the cross, and having done so routinely, perhaps for months if not years, God lifts us gradually from that miry dearth—for instances initially, then for longer, more sustained periods. We resent—at least at the outset—that we must do our cross-work, but it’s what Jesus warned us about and modelled by his own life.

Suffering’s a great antipathy and a messy anachronism that never suits us, but its source is based in a recipe that has worked from the ancients until now, eternally.

Suffer well and we thrive. It’s because it’s the greatest expression of faith there is. It’s easy to obey God when there’s no test afoot. We miss the mark when the pressure comes on; the typical human default.

God is saying, “You can get through this—hope in me—there is enough of me to help you through—my grace is sufficient!”

Returning from suffering’s source is the eventual outcome. Nobody remains there. Adjustments are made and God forms us into new people.

***

Deeply inside, where our pain finds its real identity, and where we bear it well, is born both a dream and God’s equipping for a new thing. It is the Lord’s compensation for what we’ve been through.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The Meaning of Life According to Jim Carrey

“I don’t want to be presumptuous... but the meaning of life... want to know what it is? Love yourself. That’s it, love yourself. That’s what I think it is... and, be visible, no matter what the risk... be honest.”

— Jim Carrey

The meaning of life is a question that pulsates with either conscious or unconscious purpose within every single one of us.

We cannot help but be captivated at some intrinsic level, because we suffer in the body, we experience losses, and many experiences of life are unjust. We all want to be inherently satisfied with life. We all want life to be personally meaningful.

Love Yourself (In Context)

It was reprehensible when I was young to ‘love myself’, as if doing so were an egoistic love. Loving ourselves, as Carrey puts it, is nothing about ego; it’s about coming to a humble acceptance of ourselves, and to see ourselves as God sees us. Rejecting ourselves is also about the ego; the ego that cannot stand to be thought of as being despicably ‘vain’ enough to love ourselves.

To love ourselves as Christ loves us – and gave himself for us on the cross – is nothing close to a vain love. ‘Love myself’ also means, ‘believe in myself’, ‘see myself in the light of truth’, and ‘respond to life in self-respecting ways’.

Be Visible – Approach and Live Courageously

Shrinking is a practice many of us have involved ourselves in. Whether it’s a fear to be described or whether it’s an anxious fear, doesn’t matter, because if we hide ourselves away, in any way, we face the non-existence of ourselves. This is a lie. We exist. By God’s power, creation, and grace we exist; we belong here; nobody is any more important than we, ourselves, are.

We are blessed to accept our presence. Such a state of being abides in the truth.

Be Honest

Truth is crucial to the whole of life. Being honest, we have the reason to love ourselves. Being courageous, we have the power to love ourselves.

When we are honest we are also courageous. And courage requires honesty.

To be honest is to have integrity – our inside lines up with our outside. We are integral. We do not lie to ourselves and our integrity is further reinforced in the safe knowledge of truth.

***

Love Jesus Christ and he will show you how to love yourself. Then you will have the right basis for loving others. Not only that, but we find that, in this twisted wreckage of existence we call life there is a new way that gives us meaning beyond life itself.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The Ministry of Homeliness In Loneliness

Touch the reality of your loneliness

And there you may finally be

Able to accommodate another’s loneliness

So it’s hope that you and they may see.

“Ministers who have come to terms with their own loneliness and are at home in their own houses are hosts who offer hospitality to their guests.”

— Henri J.M. Nouwen (1932–1996)

LONELINESS is a great and untapped ally, if only we can be honest in our lack. The greatest thing about loneliness is it’s something we all suffer. It therefore connects us intrinsically with each other and our own persons. As soon as we connect these ideals of lack, we determine that the upper limits of humanity are reached in simply being who we are – creatures of heaven subsisting, but for a time, here, on planet Earth.

After Earth all will make sense. It will make sense again as it has always made sense.

In our loneliness – in all its myriad forms – we will suffer as we will. But if we take that suffering as assumed, we have something for all other persons to cling to, if or when they need it. This is nothing ab0ut dependence – the other person on us or we on them. No, it’s about a safe haven where no pretence survives and connection flows between two beings made in the image of God.

Wherever there is truth, there is safety. That’s because in the truth is grace. Because loneliness is an existential truth – that all who exist suffer loneliness – it is an abiding fact of life that offers goodness, not horror; hope, not despair.

In itself, loneliness is the answer, for loneliness is the invitation to entry upon the Divine. God meets us there. There we will recognize God.

The best ministers offer not their skills, their knowledge, their gifting, and their experience, but, according to Nouwen, they offer their very selves. They are vessels of comfort in their own beings. They afford those who call into their home, lodging, free of board and keep, for space is determined on the eternal need. No material thing comes close.

Being of this modus operandi, there is no reason for self-doubt on either side – the minister or the ministered-to. There is every assurance afforded by simple authenticity – when two can be one together, invoking the eternal space where God is mysteriously present. Two, in this way, transcend loneliness, for they have overcome, in the moment, every worldly need.

***

Loneliness is a true ally if we can accommodate a new truth: loneliness connects us all. Tap into loneliness with another human being and see what God does!

When we are at home in our loneliness we invite others into true hospitality.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

The Ministry of the Cross for the Suffering

“In the darkest night of our soul, we have something to hold on to that Job never knew. We know Christ crucified. Christians have learned that when there seems to be no other evidence of God’s love, they cannot escape the cross.”

— D.A. Carson

REMANDED in the state of perplexed confusion – a sort of rallying numbness, and a pain poignantly unknown and palpably indescribable – we wonder quite how life could be dissolved into this: a graceless wasteland of the soul pinging without purpose, residing in an abiding anxiousness.

The Journey Inward

Having traipsed that tremulous track into the inglorious unknown of suffering – that contorted dark night – we knew a certain gathering that occurred within ourselves; but only, as it happened, after we were released from that period of pain.

We came to know this as the journey inward, knowing now that that journey inward was necessary before a new living and vibrant life identity could be explored or even established. It was the journey inward that gave us the answers we needed to stride afresh into a confident new day.

The Journey Outward

A confident new day is seasoned in an acceptance of things as they are; as they have become; as they will be from now on.

The journey outward is faith, but it is a beautiful adventure of the spirit involved with captivating vivacity with the Spirit of the living God.

The journey outward was anointed by the ministry of the cross; God’s love through Christ our Lord that is now eternally expressed and purposed and meaningful in the very mode of suffering.

That Ministry of Christ’s Love Expressed in the Cross

Heaven bound we eternally were – as we gather around the knowledge of Christ’s cross as an anthem for God’s love in a symphony of praise to God on High.

This cross speaks to us not only about his suffering, but about ours as well. It speaks to us about love and hope and grace; the sacrifice of love that is a dear treasure to cling to in the darkest minute and day. This cross is a spectacle, eternally portrayed, and a light to the world beckoning in the darkest part; the darkest part of life. This cross is excellence in the confusion; an answer in the mystery; a blessed release from considered condemnation. It is everything it ever could be, even in the unacceptability of suffering. It is nothing of the hopelessness that Job knew in his despairing with his three ‘friends’. The cross is something where previously there really was nothing.

The ministry of the cross is foreboding in the sense of anything the world could send our way. But it only works as we reflect upon Christ’s blood-spilt and bodily-torn glory.

We must keep the cross ever before us. To be reminded of God’s empathy in the midst of our own suffering. To know the price God was willing without compromise to pay. To wallow as we will before him who redeems us even in his own suffering.

© 2014 S. J. Wickham.